Globalisation and the rise of inequality

The panic comes in part from a rush to lump all the blame on globalisation. Technology—an even less resistible force—is also destroying white- and blue-collar tasks in a puff of automation and may play a bigger role in explaining rising wage inequality and the sluggish growth of middling wages. The distinctions between technology and globalisation count, if only because people tend to welcome computers but condemn foreigners (whether as competitors or immigrants). That makes technology easier to defend. (more)

“Acting White”

By Ronald G. Fryer

Minority communities in the United States have yet to generate a large cadre of high achievers, a situation as discouraging as the high incarceration rates among minorities who never finish high school. In fact, the two patterns may be linked. As long as distressed communities provide minorities with their identities, the social costs of breaking free will remain high. To increase the likelihood that more can do so, society must find ways for these high achievers to thrive in settings where adverse social pressures are less intense. The integrated school, by itself, apparently cannot achieve that end. (more)

Self Interest, Rightly Understood

By Samuel Gregg, D.Phil.

Any system of social and economic life that aspires to be truly humane needs to reflect the nature of human beings. Communism imploded, at least in part, because it denied certain truths about humans, most notably the fact that we possess the unique ability to make free choices. By attempting to replace market mechanisms of supply and demand with a top-down command approach, both socialist and communist economic theory ascribed abilities to humans that are possessed by no individual or group. One was the assumption that any one of us can look ahead and foresee all the possible needs of an entire society at any one point of time in the near or distant future. No matter how sophisticated the available methods of economic modeling, such foresight is beyond any human intelligence. There are good reasons why economic forecasting is often described as more of an art than a science. (more)

At a Greater Cost: Winning Now or Later

By John Mark Reynolds

If Britain had acted preemptively, she could have ended at least many of the problems that led to the Second World War. She chose not to pay the smaller bill in the twenties for freedom and barely could pay the higher bill presented in the forties. In fact, it broke the British Empire to fight the Second World War.

The problem with preemption is that one can never be sure that one did the right thing . . . the problem with waiting is that it might be too late or the cost so staggering that it destroys the entire social order.

The United States faces such a moment in Iraq in the Global War on Terror. Founding a positive nation-state in Iraq is relatively expensive compared to the small brush-wars the US is used to fighting. Any serviceman lost is sad and we have lost thousands. (more)

Angry Talk

By Stanley Kurtz
National Review Online

A review of A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now by Peter Wood.

What exactly is New Anger? Let’s find out by first having a look at Old Anger. Before we lionized all those angry anti-heroes — from Jack Nicholson in the movies, to John McEnroe on the tennis court — Americans admired the strong silent type: slow to boil, reluctant to fight unless sorely provoked, and disinclined to show anger even then. Gary Cooper in Sargent York comes to mind. Old Anger was held in check by ideals of self-mastery and reserve. As Wood puts it, “Dignity, manliness, and wisdom called for self-control and coolness of temper.” The angry man, Wood reminds us, was once thought a weak-minded zealot, bereft of good judgment and prey to false clarity. Above all, Americans (especially women) kept anger at bay “lest it overwhelm the relations on which family life depends.” (more)

'Our Most Powerful Engine of Production'

By
TCS Daily

Thus instead of land, labor and capital--the traditional inputs of economic theory--it was "people, ideas and things" that mattered, driving technological change and entrepreneurial creativity. "No longer were the advantages of technical superiority to be understood as a case of 'market failure,'" Mr. Warsh writes. "They were part of the rules of the game." Such superiority was by its nature temporary--i.e., nonmonopolistic. New knowledge constantly trumped old, and the law (rightly) gave ideas only limited property-protection. (more)